


Maybe I Dreamed You

by IShipThem



Series: We'll Never Speak of This [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 09:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2344151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipThem/pseuds/IShipThem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Lost Things" through Ronan's POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe I Dreamed You

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: discussions of suicide, blood, injuries, and Ronan's terrible, terrible self-esteem.

To say Ronan Lynch was tired would’ve been a gross understatement.

He was so far gone past that, he’d left “tired” somewhere around Mars, then gone careering straight ahead to fucking Pluto.

His eyelids weighted like concrete, shut together as if welded in place. His bones felt petrified. His muscles were cables of steel, tying him down to bed and to earth and within his own body.

There was fire licking at his arms, but Ronan could not muster the will to flinch, nor the brain power to remember why he should.

Time had also become a concept entirely alien to his mind. How could he tell one moment from another when all of them were exactly the same? How could he know if he’d been going anywhere when his memories just drifted about in his consciousness, like wet pieces of bread on milk? Ronan could’ve laid there for millennia or for milliseconds. It hardly made a difference.

But then he heard voices.

At first, Ronan couldn’t tell they were voices. They felt more like waves, the meaningless pressure you got when you had your ears underwater. But drop by drop, they built and differentiated, until whole sentences reached his mind.

 He heard the sound of bricks smashing through a glass window:

“—cut his fucking wrists—“

“—suicide watch—“

“—hasn’t even woken up—“

“—blood up to his _ears_ —“

Ronan’s breath hitched and wavered. On cue, the fire in his arms roared to life, burning his flesh right through to the bone. At any given time, he would’ve been up and swearing with the foulness and viciousness of a young demon – but now, there was no energy left for that. A weak moan struggled past his lips and fell meekly against his chest.

Ronan forced his eyes to open.

He was lying on his back on a foreign surface, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It took Ronan a lifetime to understand what he was looking at: his vision was dark-blurry at the edges, and his optical nerves seemed to take ages transporting information. _Grey_ was the first thing he noticed. Then, what was probably sunlight. There was something immediately identifiable about that ceiling, and the particularity of it nabbed at Ronan’s exhausted synapses whilst refusing to make itself clear.

The words dimmed themselves again, becoming second to the ceiling’s puzzling question. There was no blood left to process both at the same time.

The dripping of water disrupted his thoughts – they scattered like the reflection upon a lake’s surface. Painstakingly, Ronan tried to look towards it. He found he had to break every movement into awkward micro-motions: pain and lethargy fought against him each step of the way. Finally, though, he could turn his neck to the left far enough to locate the dripping sound.

Was that a…

A…

Ronan closed his eyes again. Oh, he couldn’t be fucking bothered with remembering the name of it.

He was.

So.

Tired…

 

* * *

 

He woke up again with enough brain cells to remember what’d happened.

A _hospital_ ceiling. An IV drip.

Of fucking course.

Breathing through the merciless onslaught of memories, Ronan planted his palms firmly against the mattress and began pushing off. He needed to be sitting. He needed to open his eyes. His arms cried in agony, red hot pain dissimulated under stark white bandages, but he forced his muscles past the point of torture either way.

He needed to stay awake.

Ronan was panting and coated in a thin layer of sweat by the time he’d managed the feat. His heart was thundering in his throat. His head was spinning, hurling itself around in breathless, reckless jumps. He was dizzy, and nauseous, and so, so past exhausted, but he was awake.

Now he just needed to keep at that.

Till the day he dropped dead.

Wheezing as he waited for the room to stop swimming, Ronan leaned back against the headboard. He could still hear Gansey and Declan arguing, recognizing their voices with no conscious thought. It seemed, in fact, as if he was running entirely on his primitive brain right now. He knew everything that had happened – night horrors, blood, hospital, suicide watch – but none of it in words. Only in dread and exhaustion and vague nausea.

Ronan wondered, in a hazy, nebulous sort of way, how much blood he’d lost, and how much blood they’d put back in his veins. If his heart was propelling the blood of a stranger through his body, was it still dangerous? If he was completely bled out, Ronan thought, would he still be capable of pulling monsters out of his dreams?

Sleep tried to lure him into is claws again, and Ronan gritted his teeth against it. A siren’s song kept lulling him back into unconsciousness, and the gritty, throbbing pain in his arms made it harder and harder to keep afloat. He felt cold sweat running down between his shoulder blades.

It might have been panic trying to settle inside his ribs.

But he could.

Not.

Fall asleep.

He hissed when a deeper breath sent his cuts aching like a motherfucker. This was gonna be harder than at first predicted.

Carefully keeping his breaths shallow, Ronan found a position comfortable enough to be bearable, but _only_ bearable. Too much pain and he’d pass out – too little and he’d fall asleep. Either way, he wasn’t letting that happen.

Gansey and Declan’s voices kept drifting in and out of his range, so dull they were almost hypnotic. Ronan focused on staying awake. Mercifully, that took all of his concentration.

He didn’t even notice someone was watching him.

Until he heard them.

The small, muffled sound of a body hitting the threshold sent Ronan’s already strained muscles into complete stiffness. The urge to fight or flight flared to life, but there was nothing he could do. Too tired, too empty. He couldn’t argue with anyone right now.

Which, Ronan guessed, really meant he’d hit rock bottom.

The silent stretched.

The person’s eyes bore into the back of his neck. Ronan cursed wearily. This persistent stare probably meant it was Declan, standing there being judgmental and looking sour like pig piss. Just his rotten luck.

The weight of Ronan’s body threatened to drag him down.

He gave up pretending he hadn’t noticed.

Putting together all the meager scraps of energy he had left, Ronan let anger well up inside of him. An easy feat. He was conditioned for that particular chemical reaction. Anything could be quickly, and efficiently, burned into useful anger. Letting it settle in his voice and in his eyes, he used it as fuel to whirl around when his body could barely managing stand up, and _glared._

“What _is_ it, De—”

He bit his tongue to stop the words from coming.

Blood coated the back of his teeth, and Ronan’s breath hiccupped fitfully. He couldn’t afford to lose any more of it.

But Adam was standing at the door.

What was Adam _doing_ at the door?

Ronan tried to read the boy’s face, searching for answers in perplexed silence. He hadn’t heard Adam’s voice so far, and he was sure of it, for he wouldn’t have missed it. He’d just assumed Adam hadn’t been around. It didn’t make sense. Ronan had been _sure_ he wasn’t around.

Adam could simply have been silent so far, but Ronan _knew_ that wasn’t the case.

And why was he _staring_ like that?

He didn’t usually do that… did he?

 _Fuck’s sake_ , he couldn’t _deal_ with this right now. Not Adam, and not the way Adam was staring at him. Definitely not the way the staring made him feel broken and vaguely guilty and nakedly _wanting_.

“ _What,_ Parrish?” he snapped, distilling frustration into anger. “You lost something?”

Adam didn’t seem troubled in the least by the gratuitous attack, which unsettled Ronan down to his core. Not that Adam ignoring his outbursts was unusual. But most often his ignoring had a very particular tone to it – that fine touch of scorn, the impatience in the way his eyes just flickered up to the heavens. It made him seem very unimpressed, all in all. But it also meant he’d _listened_ to what Ronan had said. It was a reaction.

This wasn’t a reaction as much as it was… blast it all to hell. Ronan had no idea what the fuck he was even thinking.

All he knew was that Adam was slopping against the door as if he was weak, and Ronan was so exhausted he couldn’t name the emotions in his face.

He saw him take a breath, then watched his lips forming words, and felt when the pressure of it reached his ears. With great delay, his brain rearranged the sound waves into a recognizable word. With even greater delay, it attached meaning to that word, and only then, minutes after Adam had said it, did he realize that was the answer to his question.

“Almost,” Adam said, casually, much too casually, and Ronan’s eyelids threatened to snap shut.

Almost? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

What had he even asked Adam to get that answer?

Why was the world going so slow and his brain even slower?

Ronan stared at Adam, straining his eyes to make his image stop floating.  The idea finally occurred to him maybe he was hallucinating. That did seem likely.

Almost. Almost _what?_ Almost…

Almost…

Ronan’s hand slipped on the mattress, nearly sending him tumbling back into a lying position. He had to be mistaken. Adam couldn’t have meant what his nightmare-addled brain thought he was saying.

A hallucination, then. A merciful, bizarre last comfort before he clunked it. He was either imagining Adam standing there, or simply hearing voices. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough, Hallucination-Adam would walk over to the bed and say it again, in more words this time – simpler words, so he could understand it without frying brain cells.

Maybe Hallucination-Adam would keep him company and distract him until he was finished bleeding out.

That wouldn’t be so bad.

It wouldn't be bad at all.

The moment shattered at the harsh sound of someone else’s voice.

“He’s awake now?” it asked, barbs in its tone, a grater against Ronan’s scrapped bones.

Adam turned around, his face disappearing from view, and Ronan was ready to beg out. Keeping the Titanic floating would’ve been easier than keeping himself awake. He was running out of fuel to burn. His body would soon begin digesting itself trying to fend of sleep.

He couldn’t fall asleep.

“Define awake,” Adam told Declan, and the heavy exhaustion fog around Ronan shifted for long enough that he understood something.

Adam hadn’t been here the whole time. And Ronan knew it, because otherwise, he would’ve heard him talking with Declan and Gansey. If Adam had been here, they wouldn’t have gone on bickering for so long. He’d have interfered.

Ronan had no idea how he knew that.

But he did.

He was so taken with that understanding that he completely missed the following quarrel between the three of them. It was Adam moving that snapped him out of it again. He stepped inside the room, closing the door behind him, and sending Ronan’s neurons into a frenzied short-circuit. What was going _on?_ He couldn’t understand a single thing this fucking idiot was doing today.

“Why _aren’t_ you sleeping?” Adam asked him, with frank, innocent curiosity.

His arms were aching and hurting as if drenched in acid. His body barely felt like his. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t move, could scarcely breath.

But above all.

He had to stay awake.

“Can’t,” he told Adam, that one syllable taking everything he had to make out. There was honesty to it he should never have let slip.

Adam didn’t reply. Just kept walking. Ronan followed his motions, desperate and confused and so, so past tired. He needed Adam _to go away._ He didn’t have energy for Real Adam, if this was really him.

But he sat down by Ronan’s bed.

Panic burst through his frayed body like expanding gas, feeling every fold of his skin and flesh. Please, not this. He couldn’t figure out if Adam was really there or not – and if he _was_ , Ronan might end up doing something majorly stupid. He almost _wanted_ for it to be a hallucination, just so he could pretend in peace.

But what if it wasn’t?

“Are you just gonna sit there and stare at me?” Ronan growled, hoping with ferocity that would be enough to drive him away.

But Adam just gave him _that_ unimpressed look. Ronan’s insides decompressed with cold relief. _Finally._ This was ground he knew how to walk on.

“No,” Adam told him, making his question sound completely absurd. “ _I_ am going to sleep.”

Ronan stared at him, more and more certain he was hallucinating at least _some_ part of this conversation. His eyes traveled down, so weary they couldn’t even keep his gaze level, and fell on Adam’s wrists as if magnetically attracted.

The sight of bruises tore through his exhaustion with loud ripping sounds.

Those looked _fresh_. What could have happened at – what was it, early morning? – to make his father go berserk? Had Gansey seen this? Was Adam hiding out with him to avoid questions?

He was wearing his school uniform.

School. Was today a school day? Why wasn’t Adam at school?

Why had he come to see Ronan instead?

Adam yanked the sleeves back down, hiding the bruises from sight. Ronan looked back up at him, puzzled and feeling sick. Why couldn’t he shake the feeling he had something to do with those bruises?

“Night,” Adam said firmly, baring Ronan from asking any questions. Unnecessary. He wouldn’t have asked questions, anyway.

Ronan watched Adam close his eyes with purpose and lean back on the chair. God, if he could at least think coherently.

He couldn’t fall asleep with Adam _right next to him._ They would shred him to bits before he even opened his eyes.

He opened his mouth to tell Adam to just _fucking go_ , when he noticed.

_You’re not sleeping for real._

Did Adam think he wouldn’t realize? He was _clearly_ faking it.  Ronan had positively completely lost track of what the hell was going on.

Sleep tugged at his eyelids again, and the pull was finally too strong to resist. Ronan couldn’t even question why it was suddenly so easy giving up. Sliding down the bed in a defeated slump, he reached for the sheets and pulled them up to his neck, curling into a ball underneath it. He made sure to put his back to Adam.

Somewhere beneath conscious level, everything began clicking into place, unnoticed and forgotten. Though Ronan would wake up hours from now with only a half-formed memory of this, twisted and fogged by sleep, right now the certainty of Adam’s words settled like a blanket over his panicked brain.

Those were things he knew when he gave up trying to figure them out.

He knew what _Almost_ meant.

He knew why Adam’s wrists were bruised.

He knew why he was pretending to be asleep.

Maybe he didn’t believe most of this – not when he woke up, and not when he was still clinging to consciousness with helpless, frantic fear.

But knowing it was enough to lull him back to sleep. At least for now.


End file.
